pan-africanism and the challenges of development in the

Africana December 2010

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Pan-Africanism and the Challenges of Development in the 21st Century Dr. Akpomuvie Orhioghene Benedict9

Key Terms: Africa, Pan-Africanism, development, poverty, industrialization, globalization, population growth. Abstract Some people maintain that Africa cannot unite because it lacks the ingredients necessary for unity including a common race, culture and language. Yet, the forces that unite Africa greatly outweigh the forces that divide it. In practical terms, this deep rooted unity has been demonstrated in the development of Pan-Africanism and, more recently, in the projection of what has been called the African personality in world affairs. This paper generally focuses upon discerning the best way to promote unity and development in Africa, as well as on the correct path for achieving economic development in the continent. Perhaps no condition better depicts the state of Africa’s current development than the commonality of poverty in Africa. Despite these bleak circumstances, Africans welcomed the new millennium with enthusiasm and a new found determination to tackle the continent’s long standing developmental burden. This paper recommends that Africans be mindful that in a world that is rapidly globalizing, enormous challenges face the continent’s development and that power, might, wealth and technology determine ‘who gets what, and when and how’ in the world. For Africa to get out of its low-level economic trap and lay the foundation for significant progress in economic decolonization, new economic strategies need to be formulated and rigorously pursued at all levels.

9 Dr. Akpomuvie Orhioghene Benedict, PhD, Delta State University, Abraka, Delta State, Nigeria. Email: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


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Introduction For many years, African politicians throughout the continent have called for African freedom and unity. Nyerere (1969) however, contended that politicians have presented the political and economic arguments for freedom and unity without focusing on details. Nyerere stated that significant thought and detailed negotiations must replace slogans if the politicians’ objectives are to be attained. To ask what is meant by African unity is the same as asking what Africans want and expect to achieve. In broad terms, the answer is simple: Africans wish to determine their destinies and overcome the poverty that has plagued the continent for decades.

Africa has a population of about 78 million people which constitutes about 10 percent of the world population. Moreover, Africa’s land covers an area of 30.1 million square kilometers. Most of the continent’s economies are dominated by agriculture. (South Africa and Mauritius are the only major exceptions to this generalization.) The influence of African agriculture is evident in that about two-thirds of Africa’s total labour force is employed in agricultural jobs and about a third of the GDP and one half of its exports are agricultural (ADB, 2001:19, 235). Furthermore, over 70 percent of the continents exports are unprocessed commodities and most commodity prices have declined consistently over the years. Current global trade rules create barriers to processing. One such barrier is that the region requires that its capacity be increased to import essential intermediate and capital goods that are important for economic growth.

After registering an average of 2.6 percent annual growth

between 1965 and 1974, per capital GDP stagnated in most African Countries. Moreover, mainly because of an increasing decline in trade, Africa’s economy continued to deteriorate during the first half of the 1980s for the decline in trade significantly reduced Africa’s access to international finance. This decline in turn resulted in over two thirds of Africa’s population to have lower incomes in 1985 than they did in the


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mid-1970s (World Bank, 1994: 17-19). Africa’s poor economic performance appears even more unfavorable when compared to the economic performance of other developing countries throughout the world.

Most African economies continued to be poor throughout the

second half of the 1980s and 1990s. According to UN statistics (see Todaro 200: 708 – 9), in the 1980s, Africa’s poverty rate rose to about 40 percent. Moreover, real wages declined by over 30 percent and even dropped by more than 50 percent in some countries. Additionally, in 1996, debt service amounted to 14 percent of total export earnings. The poor state of African economics is made further evident by the fact that while underemployment became severe during the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s, open unemployment increased at an annual rate of 10 percent. This data supports that from a global perspective, Africa has fallen steadily behind the rest of the world. During the 1980s and early 1990s, many African countries adopted the World Bank/IMF inspired Structural Adjustment Programmes to correct structural imbalances and enhance macroeconomic stability in their countries.

Perhaps the best way to appreciate the imperatives of African

unity in this era is to place them in context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) that were adopted in 2000. According to the United Nations (UN), the development goals set by the Millennium Declaration expressed the resolve of the ‚world’s political leaders to free their fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to make the right to development a reality for everyone and to free the entire human race from want‛ (UN), 2000:8).

Africa has been struggling to take control of her destiny since

the beginning of the last century. In 1900, the first Pan-African Congress was held in London. Other congresses followed but, according to the renowned African anthropologist, historian and scholar Ali Mazrui, the


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first four Pan-African Congresses did not help Africa move towards political self-determination. However, in 1945, the fifth congress marked a turning point for Africa. The congress helped English speaking Pan-Africanist Nationalists become aware that the colonial problem required action in Africa to be solved, not manoeuvring in European capitals (Mazrui and Tidy, 1984). According to Nkuhlu (2003), this marked the beginning of a new consciousness: a realization that Africans needed to take ownership and leadership of their struggle against all forms of colonialism. To Nkuhlu, this was the beginning of the African Renaissance.

Great Pan-Africanists like W.E.B. Du Bois, George Padmore,

Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Leopold Senghor shared a vision of a free Africa in which it would be in a position to make its own contribution to human culture, science and civilization. As rightly noted by Nkuhlu (2003),from the start, the struggle against colonialism was not only about achieving political independence. It was also about creating conditions for the continent to be regenerated.

Unfortunately, the rebirth of the continent remains an

unfinished task: Africa is yet to take control of her destiny. During the Cold War years, African countries had no choice but to remain, not only allied to, but also dependent on the superpowers. Consequently, African resources continued to be exploited, unabated, by super powers and their allies as if colonialism had not ended. Moreover, African countries continued to supply minerals and raw materials at prices determined by the interests of the developed countries. Unlike in other countries and continents, the existence of abundant natural resources did not lead to increased investments in processing industries and the transfer of technology to Africa; but rather, it led to the impoverishment of the continent. Africa’s lack of control over both its political and economic destiny has retarded the rejuvenation of the continent.


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Africa’s leaders and thinkers, including academic theoreticians, pragmatic activists and especially Africa’s premier regional intergovernmental organization, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), continue to focus upon the study of the unpleasant developmental experiences of independent Africa that have occurred since the 1950s. The analysis asserted by Asante (1991) generally focuses on the broad issue of discerning how best to promote development in Africa and to determine the ‚correct‛ path towards economic development. Enduring interest in this subject has been considerably heightened by what is now generally termed, the ‘continental African development crisis.’ This crisis has been intensifying over the last decade which in turn has profound implications for people’s satisfaction as well as political stability in Africa. Development as Freedom and a Search for an Alternative African

Development Strategy The debate over the meaning of development and its direction and constituents has persisted for decades. As it has continued, the debate has brought about postulations from contending theoretical perspectives.

Obi and Chukwuemeka (2006) contended that perhaps what fueled the conflict on the real meaning of development was that despite many years of implementing policies fashioned by western ‘development’ agencies and scholars, the third world, including African nations, remains neck deep in poverty and some nations are getting poorer. These scholars argued that if all the ‘theories’, programmes and policies that have been forced upon the third world under the belief that they are vital to development have not worked after many decades, one or bother of the following are true: the conceptualization of development is faulty or the approaches towards realizing it are wrong. This realization has made a new approach to development necessary.


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In the late 1960s and early 1970s, much theorizing about the causes of Africa’s underdevelopment and alternative strategies for development were propounded. Yet, while various developmental theories and concepts provided some initial direction for research, by the mid 1970s, both the theories and concepts were shown to be inadequate for explaining Africa’s continued under-development. Asante (1991) noted because they were grounded in western political and developmental tradition, the various theories often distorted more than they explained. Not suprisingly, the policies, programmes and projects that were formulated on the basis of these theories have had notable failings.

In many respects, as far as development is concerned, African countries, and the continent as a whole, stand at a crossroads. Past strategies appear to demand a thorough re-examination in order for the potential opportunities for higher and more stable rates of growth to be exploited. Hence, in recent years, there has been a desperate search for new approaches and methods for development. These approaches should not be focused on poorly imitating the strategies and life styles of societies with different historical, cultural, economic, and political backgrounds. This article contributes to the search for new methods and is written by informed writer who advocates for indigenous African strategies.

Development can be seen as a process of expanding the real

freedoms that people enjoy. As Sen (2001) correctly stressed, focusing on human freedoms differs from narrower views of development such as identifying development with the growth of the gross national product, the rise of personal incomes, industrialization, technological advancement and social modernization. Of course, growth of the GNP or of individual incomes can be very important in order to expand the freedoms of members of society. But freedoms also depend on other determinants such as social and economic arrangements (i.e., facilities


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for education and health care), as well as political and civil rights (i.e., the liberty to participate in public discussion and scrutiny).

Similarly, industrialization, technological progress and social

modernization can contribute substantially to expanding human freedom. Freedom depends on other influences as well. If freedom is what development advances, then a significant argument for concentrating on the over-arching objective rather than on some particular means or specially chosen list of instruments exists. Viewing development in terms of expanding substantive freedoms causes attention to be directed to making development important, rather than merely focusing on a means that plays a prominent part in the process.

Sen (2001) further averred that development requires major sources of oppression be removed including: poverty, tyranny, poor economic opportunities, systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities, and intolerance. Despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers of people; perhaps even to the majority of people. Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to the economic poverty that robs people of the freedom to satisfy hunger, to achieve sufficient nutrition, to obtain remedies for treatable illnesses, to be adequately clothed or sheltered, and to enjoy clean water and sanitary facilities. Sen (1989) also viewed development as capability expansion.

From the foregoing information, one comes to understand

development as essentially a broad, multidimensional process that encapsulates the political, economic and social spheres of people’s lives. In an attempt to capture the developmental aspirations of Africa, references must be made to past attempts to create continent-wide development programmes. For example, between the 1980s and the early 1990s, African leaders adopted a number of initiatives that were developed in Africa such as The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which was aimed at addressing all dimensions


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of the multifaceted developmental challenges that confronted the continent. Other initiatives included:

� The Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa, 1980-2000 and the Final Act of Lagos, 1980;

� Africa’s Priority Programme for Economic Recovery (APPER), 1986-1990;

� The African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programme for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation (AAF-SAP), 1989;

� The African Charter for Popular Participation for Development, 1990 and

� The Compact for African Recovery, 2000. If NEPAD is not truly the first comprehensive initiative that

emanated from Africa that was designed to tackle the continent’s problems, the claim that it is the first truly African-owned framework for redressing the socio-economic and political difficulties of African countries must also be addressed.

NEPAD has been hailed as perhaps the boldest new initiative that focuses on the appropriate path that Africa should take to achieve long-term development. NEPAD appears to offer a new basis of hope that Africa may still rediscover the path to sustainable development as has been created in the midst of the fairly obvious failure of nearly twenty years of IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment and the donor regime of conditionality and cross-conditionality that was integral to promoting the neo-liberal agenda in Africa. According to Adebayo Olukoshi in his ‚Governing the African Developmental Process: The Challenges of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD),‛ it is all the more so that NEPAD offers hope for development since the programme is presented not only as an African-driven project in content and direction, but also apparently departs from the experiences of the adjustment years. Therefore, for the very


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reason of its alleged African ‚ownership‛, the programme is expected to strengthen the prospects for achieving the goals of the initiative.

Although NEPAD has been extensively criticized for having an

essentially neo-liberatist character, the programme represents the most recent in a series of development cooperation agreements that has been formulated to help elevate Africa from its morass of underdevelopment (Ogwu, 2002). The remote origins of the process leading to the formulation and adoption of NEPAD can be traced to the arrival of the post-Apartheid era in Africa politics, as well as to the widespread belief that with continental liberation from foreign and minority rule complete, the next challenge that Africans must tackle is promoting economic development.

The establishment of the African Union (AU) represents an

attempt by African states to gain even more than the Organization of African Unity (OAU) did in the past. While OAU has five objectives, the constitutive Act of the African Union spells out fourteen objectives. Objectives included in the act are to increase unity and solidarity between the countries and people of Africa and to accelerate the political and soico-economic integration of the continent.

These broad developmental goals have been adopted by African leaders and by implication, given the claim that NEPAD represents a policy initiative of the AU, represent challenges to the AU. To credibly assess the developmental challenges that face the AU, an overview of some of the salient issues that impact Africa’s development efforts in contemporary times must be made. The Challenges of African Development in the 21st Century Some years ago, the world ushered in the twenty first century and the new millennium with widespread fanfare and celebration. Africa also welcomed the new millennium with feelings of enthusiasm, vigour and


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a new found disposition to address the developmental burdens that have long burdened the continent. According to Ogwu (2002), one manifestation of this renewed vigour was the establishment of (AU). Although the AU was buffeted at its inception as representing little more than ‚old wine in new skin‛ based on the assumption that there was very little difference between it and its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the AU has been constituted and is at its incipient state of institutional development.

Africans cannot be unaware of the enormity of the challenges posed to the continent’s development in a rapidly changing world. Attention must also be paid to the fact that people exist in a world in which power, might, wealth and technology continue to determine ‘who gets what, when and how’ and a world, according to Ogwu (2002), that offers no charity to the weak.

Perhaps no condition better depicts the current circumstances of Africa’s development than the pervasiveness of poverty on the continent. Poverty in Africa has become so severe that even in comparison with other less developed countries in other continents, poverty is evidently rising on the continent. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Developments, ‚Least-Developed Countries 2002 Report,‛ the proportion of people in 29 African countries living below $2 per day increased from 82 percent in the late 1960s to 87.5 percent in the late 1990s. For those living in extreme poverty (those making less than $1 per day), the increase was from 55.8 to 64.9 percent. In absolute figures, the number of Africans living in extreme poverty rose from 89.6 million to 233.5 million over the same period of time. Furthermore, the United Nations classified 49 countries, worldwide, as less developed countries. They were assessed on the basis of GDP, human resources and economic diversification. Out of this number, 33 of the countries are located in sub-Saharan Africa.


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Poverty is aggravated in Africa by additional burdens that saddle the continent. The crisis created by the debt alone ensures that Africa maintains a marginal position in the global arena. At the moment, there are about 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) in Africa. Out of these countries, 32 of them are Severely Indebted Low-Income Countries (SILICs), while 25 of them are in SSA. The total debt of the SILICS, which was $58.1 billion in 1980, stood at $211.2 billion in 1997 (Ajayi and Iyoha 1998). The extent of the debt problem is further demonstrated by the present value of the debt which exceeded 220 percent of exports in 1993 in 27 of 37 countries in SSA. Moreover, debt service due exceeded 25 percent of exports in 22 countries. Additionally, 12 countries had debt service that equated to more than 50 percent of their exports. Debt rescheduling was arranged for over 28 countries and some countries have gone through such arrangements up to 16 times since 1980 (World Bank, 1995).

Apart from the presidential campaigns that have been targeted at attaining debt reprieve, current efforts to reduce debt have hinged largely upon the HIPC)’s initiatives that were launched by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1996. Under this scheme, about 22 African countries qualified for some reduction in their total debt burden. However, the scheme has been criticized for having a very limited scope and being very slow in delivering the expected debt relief.

To the leaders of African nations, these challenges are eye-

openers to the fact that attaining political independence does not guarantee political and economic stability. New models must be founded for political and economic stability to be ensured. Realizing that Rome was not built in a day, social, political and economic structures that will suit new African nations have to be sought.

Two major issues, the impact of conflicts on Africa’s development and the issue of leadership (a major source of conflict), must be critically examined. Conflicts have undoubtedly undermined


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the ability of African countries to harness all the resources that are available to them for development. Otubanjo (1994) observed that while people are busy destroying the few things that they have, they also seem to think, or believe, that they need the West, which disparages from time to time, to sometimes help us acquire weapons and rebuild after the wars. One can imagine the kind of devastation that has taken places such as Liberia, Sudan, Burundi, Nigeria, Congo Democratic Republic, Rwanda, Somalia, and Ethiopia. Otubanjo further noted that one problem Africans must contend with relates to the political arrangements that allow leaders who are not very sensitive to their people’s needs to be in power. Leadership is a problem that currently plagues African nations: nations’ ability to properly determine their leaders without undue interference is the source of the problem.

The rapid spread and effects of HIV and AIDS constitute one of

the most critical challenges to human development in Africa. Although only 10 percent of the world’s population is in Africa, over 70 percent (or 25.3 million of the estimated 36.1 million people living with HIV/AIDs worldwide by the end of 2000) were living in the continent. Moreover, three quarters of the over 20 million people worldwide who have died of the epidemic since its emergence lived in Africa (ADB, 2001:3). Of the estimated 13.2 million AIDS orphans, more than 90 percent of them are in Africa. The AIDS pandemic is a serious threat to human development in Africa. It affects the major human development indices such as life expectancy, knowledge, education, income and economic growth.

According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (2000:2), ‚human development is essential for realizing human rights and human rights are vital for full human development‛. Just as human rights contribute to human development, human development also helps to augment the reach of the human rights approach. People, therefore, demand human rights as a way of enhancing their capacities and areas of choice. They demand access to education, employment,


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health care, and housing, as well as greater transparency and accountability in governance, justice and gender equality.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 acknowledges human rights as a global responsibility. At the regional level, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights and the African Human Rights Commission were put in place and ratified by African Countries. These declarations inspired many constitutions to be formed in independent African states including constitutions that are acting as political transitions to move countries from being under military rule to being democracies. Law alone cannot guarantee human rights: relevant institutions and an enabling environment are required. While many African countries have made progress in meeting the people’s demand for human rights, the majority of countries still abuse human rights. These abuses must be addressed in the interest of the people.

In Africa, corruption has had several negative implications for development and governance (ADB, 2001:123-5). It has hindered proper resource management, undermined efforts to enhance growth and poverty alleviation and has obstructed sound and sustainable growth in the private sector. In many African countries, corruption has had a crippling impact on development for it has undermined laws and weakened the foundation of national institutions, which constitutes the pillars of economic development. Widespread corruption has reinforced existing economic and social inequalities and has undermined the credibility of government and public institutions. Unless corruption is effectively combated in Africa, the vicious circle of rising poverty, poor governance and corruption will continue unabated.

Another major threat to development in Africa is rapid population growth. In 1974, the World Bank based the importance of population on the concept of human development when it observed that ‚the effect of population growth on the quality of development – as


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measured by the social indicators as the number of people who are adequately fed, become literate, share equitably in income growth and are productively employed – is more important than its effect on income growth ‚(see Ojo 1987: 80). The trend of population growth has social implications for human development issues such as education, health and nutrition, employment and housing. It is generally held that underutilizing labour (unemployment and underemployment), which is a major cause of poverty and inequality, can in itself be primarily attributed to excessive population growth (Ojo, 1981). Excessive population growth has been prominent in most African countries, being 3 percent or over in some countries in 1999; e.g. CDR and Mali (3 percent each). Population growth in other countries exists as follows: 3.1 percent in Niger, 3.3 percent in Somalia and 3.4 percent in Liberia (ADB 2000: 251). The average annual population growth for Sub-Saharan Africa is 2.8 percent (1.6 percent for the whole world) higher than the percentage of growth for any other region in the world.

In virtually all African countries, population pressure has led to

a ‚bulge‛ in the demand for education at all levels. However, a lack of adequate facilities has caused many citizens to be denied the right to education while enrollment growth rates have been recorded at the expense of quality education. The population explosion in Africa has also meant that the labour force has been growing at about 2.5 to 3 percent per annum: this has not been matched by the employment generating capacities of the national economies.

Current organizational structures in Africa are based on foreign

ideologies and are very imitative. Bolarinwa (1994) stressed that they do not rely on their strength and resources and therefore, cannot define their vision of the future. Its antecedent is clear: culture is a cumulative experience and culture develops symbiotically with the people. Moreover, people and culture are never separated in time. The impositions of foreign models have tended to separate people from


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their cultures and consequently, modern Africans tend to be a confused, aping ideas from everyone but themselves.

Among Africans, the most popular foreign models are Western ones which are based on extreme individualism. Within these models, collectivity was redefined as an institutional organization and an illusion of isolation was created for the individual. Within this illusion, friendly, communal interchanges were gradually replaced by indifferent institutional umpires that belong to isolated professional unions such as the police and social workers (Bolarinwa, 1994:96). According to Bolarinwa, intra personal interfaces have all been removed. Neighbours and co-tenants do not interact on any level. Even family ties have been broken and replaced by institutional agencies like orphanages and convalescent homes. The greatest form of impoverishment is the destruction of the community; man’s greatest need, after food and shelter, is affection. Man is a communal animal and always craves his kind. When other people are removed, man is left with the present heterogeneous social and public structures and laden with the burden of maintaining extensive bureaucracy. Consequently, a person’s community becomes separated and, a multilateral agency for every form of living is institutionalized as government.

Globalization, as it is used today, refers to growing interactions in world trade, national and foreign investment, and capital markets, as well as the ascribed role of the government in national economies. According to Aluko (2004), the hallmark of globalization is thus promoting the free market, individual initiative, private enterprise, ruthless competition and capitalism into a credo. He asserted that the logic of ‚survival of the fittest‛ becomes, as it was in countries in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, one of the physiocrats, Adam Smithsonian and their governments and the utilitarian economists. The weak people, the poor countries and their governments are blamed for their lack of competitiveness. The inexorable mix between competition and co-operation and between the public and the private sectors in


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economic countries is displayed. As defined in current operation, globalization has universal consequences; they are not restricted to Africa. However, globalization has certainly brought with it some progress as well as new opportunities, technologies, improved communication networks, new product and new opportunities. Conclusion This article examined the nature, scope and effects that globalization has on the world economy in order to show that globalization has violated, and it continues to violate, the principles of free and fair world trade as well as the principles of just distribution of the world income. As Aluko (2004) correctly noted, globalization has failed, and continues to fail, to reconcile the interests of the economically rich and strong nations and people with the interests of the economically poor and weak nations and people throughout the world. In fact, because other less economically developed countries are finding it increasingly difficult to fully integrate into the global economy, globalization is diminishing the economic competitiveness of an increasing number of peoples and countries outside the Triad. On the other hand, many weaker countries are being, once again, economically and politically re-colonized. Africa is obviously the continent that has been hit the hardest by globalization as well as by the activities of financial and economic institutions that promote and sustain the globalization paradigm.

Africa has suffered and is still suffering from the problems of delayed development. The continent and its people have been the victims of exploitation, whether in the form of slavery, colonization, neo-colonization, structural adjustment, international money-lending and money-changing or the ongoing globalization or triadization. Globalization continues to increase the competence gap and reduce Africans tendency to perform and be innovate on a daily basis(Aluko, 2004; 47). From the foregoing information, few will disagree that effectively managing the political question in Africa is a pre-requisites for


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sustaining development in the continent. Indeed, numerous African scholars, including Claude Ake, Thandika Mkandawire, Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, Mahmond Mamdani and Abdul Raufu Mustapha, have suggested that tackling the political question is an important precondition for resolving the governance and development crises of the continent. In connection with this conclusion, Ake has drawn attention to the fact that the way in which politics have been conducted tends to lead to Africa being underdeveloped. Additionally, Mamdani observed that the bifurcated nature of the state effectively disenfranchises the majority of the populace. Wamba dia Wamba has suggested that organizing politics based on the activities of professional politicians not only limits the prospects for the public to select from, but it also reinforces the authoritarianism inherent in the developmental process.

Beyond the link that scholars have made between politics and its role in influencing the development process, it can be argued that the essence of the anti-colonial and post-independence political contestations that have wracked the African continent, centre around the struggle, at all levels, for a more representative and accountable politico-constitutional order. This order can in turn serve as the basis for mobilizing the public to support a development agenda.

Although the current crisis in Africa has serious economic repercussions, it essentially has social and political origins. Consequently, there are no short cuts to resolving the problem and it will take a long time to resolve. The foundations of progress lie with the people and as such, power must be redistributed to society as a whole. Until the destiny of Africa is firmly in the hands of the African people, via the democratization of the African societies, and popular participation in the development process is mobilized, economic progress will continue to elude Africa. Therefore, a development process which puts the individual at the center of the development effort is vital.


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The cultural milieu of a people is a major factor in the

development process for that society. Moreover, the totality of values, norms, attributes and beliefs of a society shape that society’s social, political and economic organizations and inculcate a general feeling towards development and related issues amongst its people. This balance is attained over a long period and consequently, a proper understanding of this local knowledge base and values must be the starting point for development. This does not assume that all aspects of Africa’s cultural milieu are negative and problematic. There are many aspects that are positive and could be exploited more successfully for development. As it exists today, Africa is not the design of its people. Its name, partitioning, popular religions, official national languages and most of its contemporary cultures are foreign impositions: none of then is fully an African derivative. The present design of Africa definitely does not have the interest of its people as a goal. Rather the economic sovereignty of the interlopers accounts for the perpetual oppression that is carried out against Africans. Therefore, most of the philosophies are contradictory. The designs were based on the divide and rule system whereby the interests of outsiders are promoted in order to dominate other groups and are sometimes shored up with foreign means. Given this history, a moot question arises: how can Africans achieve humanity? I believe that Africa’s time has come. The time has come for Africa to take the next step in her evolution. The road has been long and arduous, from slavery to colonial subjugation, from colonial subjugation to neo-colonial dependence, and now from neo-colonial dependence to genuine independence and democracy. As President Mbeki states, ‚It is only under the conditions of the latter (genuine independence, unity and democracy) that Africa and the world will


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